Theory: MH370 Dipped Its Wing as Part of a Nostalgic Goodbye

In this March 31, 2014 file photo, the shadow of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion is seen on low level cloud while the aircraft searches for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern... (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

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Four years after MH370 vanished without a trace we still have no answers—but we do have a theory. Australia's 60 Minutes on Sunday ran an episode that tries to get at what happened to the doomed plane and presents Senior Boeing 777 pilot and instructor Simon Hardy's "discovery"—one he first aired in 2015 but one that's now getting fresh attention. He pored over the plane's flight path and believes that Captain Zaharie Amad Shah was on an intentional suicide mission and skirted back and forth over the border between Thailand and Malaysia—eight times, he previously told the BBC—as a means of avoiding detection by either country's military. "It's going in and out of those two countries ... so both of the controllers aren't bothered about this mysterious aircraft. Cause it's, 'Oh, it's gone. It's not in our space anymore,'" he says.

But there was another point that he pondered for a long time, reports news.com.au: why the plane veered off course and "dipped the wing" over Penang, Malaysia. "And after two months, three months of thinking about it, I finally got the answer—somebody was looking out the window." Hardy explains Penang was Zaharie's hometown, and he believes the pilot wanted to see it one last time before his death. A separate piece at news.com.au isn't satisfied with what the episode had to offer, saying too many holes remain. A big one: Zaharie's alleged motive has never been established. Meanwhile, the AP in early May reported that a new scan of the Indian Ocean that began in January has covered 31,000 square miles but turned up nothing. Ocean Infinity's search is expected to conclude in about a month. (The hunt for MH370 may have solved two 19th-century mysteries.)